Oedipus on Rewind
by lye tea
Summary: For Jocasta -- this to be kept in sordid squalor. /Dante x Trish/


**Oedipus on Rewind**

He saved her once, right after she tried to kill him.

Ungrateful bitch.

He denounced it as an arbitrary, momentary decision (something akin to an experiment gone horribly wrong). Subconscious and therefore guiltless. He wasn't thinking straight, didn't _think at all_(that's what she thought), and plunged right in. Like he did with everything.

She knew him so well. After all, Trish was here as his surrogate mother (the one who usurped the queen).

"Why didn't you leave me to die?" she asked him one night, sick with the lonely and angry with a millennium's worth of resentful resonances.

Dante didn't respond, continued polishing Ebony (Ivory was already pristine and clean, resting in her monogrammed upholster).

"I said—"

And then he did something he really shouldn't have: kissed her briefly on the lips. Trish gasped in surprise before withdrawing abruptly from him. His brimstone cologne lingered in the air, trapping them both inside an oxygen bubble-capsule.

Her head spun around, barely escaping the dissolution of vertigo.

. . .

Trish never expected it, that he would offer her a partnership in (this devil-slaying, hell-bringing) his "business". She never dared to investigate the specifics but had an awful, _nasty _sensation prickling her skin. That it was something like suicide.

But she agreed to stay (for now) because the look on his face—when he asked, subtly brimming with child-hope and infantile dreams—just damn near tore her heart apart. If she had a heart.

Remember: devils didn't cry, and devils didn't feel.

. . .

She was the one who found the dilapidated dump (called "office"—she began to learn human colloquialism) and converted it into an adequate, semi-habitable environment.

"This is your room, and that is…"

That was the black pit she could never fill no matter how much he believed in her…_because she and I are not the same._

And Trish would have reiterated it aloud except deep down, she knew that he knew that his mother was still ghoulish gray and dead.

. . .

"Hey, can you cook?"

"My name is not 'Hey.' It's Trish. And no, I thought you did."

"I'll call for a pizza."

. . .

The assignments flooded in, trekked in mud, and unburdened impractical and absurd demands into their tiny shop. He joked that it was good fortune and better humor. (Outside, the fluorescent lights blinked, glass shook frenetically, and curved words advertising their business died.) Trish noticed a sudden rain settling in and sighed.

Tonight was going to be long and painful. She had better prepare for misery's onslaught and—

"There's been a mysterious slaughter."

And that was all that needed to be said. Trish had her guns already in place before he finished with the briefing.

. . .

At dawn—if not daily then at least weekly, it had become an ossified ceremony—she wiped the grime and blood away from his face. Dante winced as she doused his cuts in demonic ointments, promised they worked far better than any secular unguent.

Faithfully, he believed her, not stopping to think that she was a devil through and through.

_Because in his eyes, a little boy remained, lost and sad…_

Trish stiffened automatically. (Somehow, his hand had traveled to her lower back, tugging down her pants teasingly, impishly, _brazenly_.)

"Quit it."

_Not that._

"Dante, I said quit it."

And he did, not wanting to lose her (a second time).

. . .

Months passed, and she grew bored. With the mundane habitual rituals with the now-banal darkly exorcisms.

Trish wanted to move out, and like all understanding, _filial_ partners—friends (Romans) and lovers—Dante understood perfectly. He tossed her Today's Papers and told her about apartments and flats (and flat rates).

It was a very satisfying and interesting lesson.

. . .

He didn't know if devils could get drunk, but she was acting uncharacteristically unreserved and free. She even laughed openly, no witty insults or castrating glares.

Like fluid or sound, she didn't halt to ponder the right of course, but traveled buoyantly towards wherever the road took her. And (to put it simply) she led him back to her new abode, the reinvented home.

Swift and graceful, Trish unbuckled his belt, lifted his shirt, and away went his pants. _Success. _She smiled, heavy-lidded, as if caught in a stupor (probably was) and kissed him raw and beautiful.

He reciprocated. It was the chivalrous thing to do.

Because they both knew: in the morning, she won't remember any of this, will wake up spry and springy (full of cheer and infernal grandeur). And their established roles would be replayed. As if this night never happened.

It was always so.


End file.
